1. Field of the Invention
The specification relates to transferring a media stream. In particular, the specification relates to modifying a media stream based on a channel limitation for telemedicine.
2. Description of the Problem
Medical access is difficult to obtain for many people, especially when they live in rural areas. Doctors may not be available in the rural area, or any available doctors may be general practitioners that lack the technology and/or expertise to properly diagnose specific problems. Moreover, even when doctors are available to treat the patients, they have trouble accessing the patient's medical history because access to bandwidth is limited in rural areas. As a result, treatment is limited by incomplete medical knowledge of the patient.
Previous attempts to solve this problem have included telemedicine, which is when a patient communicates remotely with a doctor over the internet. Simply providing the patient with a remote doctor, however, fails to solve the problem of connectivity limitations such as bandwidth. Previous communication attempts have relied on having strong bandwidth, such as an Ethernet connection, but this is not widely available in rural areas. If the connection is poor, transmissions can take too long to be sent. These kinds of issues can be too complicated for the staff servicing the remote facility to solve.